Questions on Kings and Chronicles

Contents

Reading pages: 1.1–1.30 · 1.31–1.58 · 1.59–2.18 · 2.19–2.27 · 2.28–2.42 · 2.43–3.18 · 3.19–3.41 · 3.42–3.57 · 3.58–4.18 · 4.19–4.48 · 4.49–4.57 · 5.1–5.3 · 5.4

1. 1.1Theodoret traces Samuel's descent from Levi through Kohath, Izhar and Korah: he was a Levite, not a priest.
2. 1.2The law tolerated Elkanah's two wives as a concession to weakness, neither permitting nor forbidding it.
3. 1.3God, not marriage alone, gives children; Hannah's prayer, meekness and faith are praised, and her song is read as prophecy of Christ and the church.
4. 1.4Eli descended from Ithamar, and his line lost the high priesthood because of his sons' wickedness.
5. 1.5The ephod, which Aquila calls a special outer garment, was a means by which God revealed hidden things.
6. 1.6Eli probably let the gifted Nazirite boy share the ephod; a note ascribed to Diodorus explains why Samuel thought Eli had called him.
7. 1.7Eli was punished for honoring his sons above God; the prophecy against his house points to the end of the Jewish priesthood and to Christ, the faithful priest, and historically to Zadok.
8. 1.8The note on the lamp dates Samuel's vision to the early night, before the lamp was refilled.
9. 1.9God appeared to the boy Samuel to rebuke the aged Eli, who nonetheless showed piety in accepting God's sentence.
10. 1.10The capture of the ark taught Israel not to rely on it while breaking the law, and taught the Philistines God's power through plagues and the test of the cows.
11. 1.11God struck Beth-shemesh because the sons of Jechonias resented the ark and the people had abandoned it; Aminadab, who received it gladly, was blessed.
12. 1.12Samuel could build an altar because the temple did not yet exist; the one-sanctuary law guarded a people prone to idolatry, while to the pious every place is holy.
13. 1.13Samuel's sons committed injustice, not sacrilege like Eli's sons, and Samuel, living far away, did not know of their bribery.
14. 1.14Samuel was grieved because asking for a king rejected God, who was already Israel's king.
15. 1.15Scripture calls Saul “good” for his looks and height, not for virtue.
16. 1.16Saul's thought of bringing Samuel a gift does not show that Samuel took payment; Samuel's public challenge proves his integrity.
17. 1.17The prophet is called a seer for his spiritual foresight; Aquila's renderings of several words are noted, and Saul's portion marks him as future king.
18. 1.18Samuel's kiss after anointing Saul imparted to him a share of the prophet's grace, as Christ breathed the Spirit on the apostles.
19. 1.19Samuel gave Saul several predicted signs to reassure him, since Saul doubted because of his humble origins.
20. 1.20God gave the farmer Saul a kingly mind when he made him king.
21. 1.21Saul's prophesying was a temporary sign, like that of the seventy elders chosen by Moses.
22. 1.22Samuel had the lot cast so that the people would see Saul's kingship as God's choice, not a human favor.
23. 1.23Nahash put out right eyes to make the Israelites unfit for battle, since the shield covers the left eye.
24. 1.24God gave Israel tall Saul because they wanted a war-leader and admired bodily size, not virtue.
25. 1.25Handing his office to the king, Samuel had the people attest his blameless rule as a model of lawful authority.
26. 1.26“A son of one year” describes Saul's childlike simplicity, which lasted only two years of his reign.
27. 1.27Jonathan destroyed a Philistine guard post set up after their victory over Israel.
28. 1.28Saul's failure to wait for Samuel before sacrificing cost him the kingdom, which God promised to a man after his own heart.
29. 1.29Israel had no iron because the victorious Philistines had taken it and controlled the smiths.
30. 1.30Jonathan asked God for a sign before his daring attack, and God gave the victory; Saul then foolishly cursed anyone who ate before evening.
31. 1.31God's silence confirmed Saul's rash curse to teach that oaths must be respected; Jonathan, who broke it unknowingly, was saved by the people.
32. 1.32God's “regret” over Saul means a change of plan: he would give the kingdom to David, from whom Christ would be born.
33. 1.33Saul lost the kingdom for disobeying God's ban on Amalek out of greed; obedience is better than sacrifice, and God's sentence was irrevocable.
34. 1.34Samuel killed Agag at God's command, as Phinehas killed Zimri.
35. 1.35Samuel's fear was natural to a human being, as Christ himself showed human fear before his passion.
36. 1.36God did not teach Samuel to lie: he really sacrificed, while keeping his main purpose hidden.
37. 1.37Samuel did not know whom God had chosen, so that passing over all seven brothers made clear that the choice of David was God's.
38. 1.38When God's Spirit left Saul, an evil spirit took its place, as the devil entered Judas when grace left him.
39. 1.39The evil spirit fell quiet at David's music because the divine Spirit was working through David.
40. 1.40Symmachus explains Jesse's instruction to David as learning what his brothers need.
41. 1.41David, trusting God, defeated Goliath; his victory with a stone and with Goliath's own sword prefigures Christ's victory over the devil through the cross.
42. 1.42David brought Goliath's head to Jerusalem to frighten the Jebusites who still held it.
43. 1.43Saul either had not noticed David during his fits of madness or, out of envy, wanted to know his origins exactly.
44. 1.44The mandyas Jonathan gave David is a kind of cloak, as other passages show.
45. 1.45Jonathan loved David as himself, as the law commands love of neighbor.
46. 1.46Saul's “prophesying” under an evil spirit was frenzy like that of false prophets, while the Spirit of God was with David.
47. 1.47Saul offered David his daughter as a trap, hoping the Philistines would kill him.
48. 1.48Saul demanded Philistine foreskins as proof and kept plotting David's death despite his oath to Jonathan.
49. 1.49Michal saved David with a dummy in his bed; Theodoret explains the obscure words for it with Aquila and other interpreters.
50. 1.50God held back Saul's messengers, and Saul himself, by making them prophesy; Saul's lying naked signified the loss of his kingdom.
51. 1.51Jonathan used a pretended archery practice to warn David secretly; Theodoret explains several obscure words of the account.
52. 1.52David was blameless in eating the holy bread, as Christ said; his act foreshadows the Eucharist open to all the baptized.
53. 1.53David's “profane journey” means a non-priestly errand made holy by his prophetic gift, which entitled him to the holy bread.
54. 1.54Doeg, detained at the sanctuary, betrayed Abimelech, and at Saul's order killed the priests of Nob, Saul's worst crime.
55. 1.55David feigned madness at Gath; he consulted God at every step, Jonathan renewed their covenant, and God turned Saul back by a Philistine raid.
56. 1.56David spared Saul in the cave, cutting only his cloak, and appealed to him with gentle words, honoring the Lord's anointed.
57. 1.57David left judgment to God and humbled himself; Saul confessed David's righteousness, foretold his kingship and asked him to spare his descendants.
58. 1.58David marched on Nabal because Nabal repaid his protection with insults, having no excuse such as Saul's power or envy.
59. 1.59David rightly broke a rash oath of vengeance at Abigail's plea; Theodoret explains several words and names in the story.
60. 1.60Saul slept in the midst of his army; David entered boldly but spared him and restrained Abishai.
61. 1.61David leaves Saul's death to God and, after sparing him again, gently reproves him and commits his cause to God.
62. 1.62Samuel's death is mentioned a second time to introduce the story of the medium of Endor.
63. 1.63Neither the medium nor a demon brought up Samuel: God himself pronounced through an apparition in Samuel's form a true sentence on Saul, as the Chronicler and the order of events show.
64. 1.64A demon told the medium who Saul was; God kept David from fighting with the Philistines against Israel.
65. 1.65God allowed the raid on Ziklag so that David would destroy Amalek and gain spoil; David fairly shared the spoil with those left behind.
66. 2.1David rightly punished the Amalekite who gloated over Saul's death and falsely claimed to have killed him.
67. 2.2The chlidon taken from Saul was a gold arm ornament.
68. 2.3David mourned for Jonathan, for the people, for the Philistines' victory, and for Saul himself.
69. 2.4The reference to the Book of the Upright shows that Kingdoms was compiled from earlier prophetic books.
70. 2.5David's lament calls Israel to weigh the greatness of its loss and not let the Philistines rejoice.
71. 2.6David's curse on the mountains of Gilboa expresses the intensity of his grief.
72. 2.7David's comparison of Jonathan's love to the love of women expresses the depth of a pure friendship that unites souls, as marriage unites two in one flesh.
73. 2.8David went first to Hebron, the patriarchs' city and the chief city of his own tribe Judah, where Judah made him king, while Abner set up Saul's son as a rival.
74. 2.9Abner's “play” was a duel of picked young men that led to battle; pursued by Asahel, Abner spared him as long as he could before killing him.
75. 2.10Abner persuaded Joab to stop the pursuit by reminding him of kinship and of the reversals of war.
76. 2.11David could take Michal back because he had never dismissed her: Saul gave her to another by force, so that union was not a marriage and the law against return did not apply.
77. 2.12Joab killed Abner out of envy under the pretext of vengeance; David lamented Abner, cursed Joab's house, and finally ordered Joab's death.
78. 2.13David laments that Abner, a wise and brave man, died not like Nabal by God's judgment but by treachery.
79. 2.14David could not yet punish the powerful Joab and left him to God, but promptly executed the murderers of Saul's son.
80. 2.15David's three anointings are Samuel's and the two appointments by Judah and then by all Israel.
81. 2.16David took Jerusalem from the Jebusites, perhaps through the water channel, and made Zion the city of David; “the Lord Almighty was with him” shows that the Spirit is Lord Almighty.
82. 2.17The “valley of the Titans” is the valley of Rephaim, named after giants who once fought there.
83. 2.18God's changing commands trained David to rely on God's help rather than his own strength.
84. 2.19Uzzah, a Levite, died not for rashness but because the ark was carried on a cart against the law; David then had the priests carry it on their shoulders.
85. 2.20Michal despised David's dancing for God; her childlessness was a punishment and also kept Saul's line from the throne.
86. 2.21Nathan, not knowing God's will, approved David's plan; God's promise of a house points beyond Solomon's temple to Christ's body and the church, and to Christ's eternal kingdom.
87. 2.22David's measuring of the Moabite prisoners shows the size of his victory; Aquila's renderings of two words are noted.
88. 2.23David obeyed the law against many horses, fulfilled Isaac's blessing over Edom, ruled justly, and honored Jonathan's son Mephibaal.
89. 2.24In a time of ease David fell into adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah; Nathan's parable led him to confess, and God forgave the death penalty but disciplined him.
90. 2.25God took the child of David's adultery so that it would not remain a living reproach to the king.
91. 2.26Solomon's name Jedidiah is explained from Aquila and Symmachus.
92. 2.27David's harsh treatment of the Ammonites repaid their own cruelty to Israel.
93. 2.28Jonadab's “shrewdness” served evil; Tamar's rape began the troubles of David's house, leading through Amnon's murder and the Tekoite woman's ruse to Absalom's revolt and David's flight, where Ittai's loyalty is an example.
94. 2.29Remembering the ark's capture when it was misused, David sent it back and submitted to God's judgment for his adultery and murder, praying only that Ahithophel's counsel be frustrated.
95. 2.30Hushai's deception is judged by its purpose: it served a pious king, as Herod's “truthful” keeping of an oath to kill John shows that truth can be culpable.
96. 2.31David was deceived by Ziba's plausible story but kept faith with Jonathan's son; he bore Shimei's curses as God's discipline, though the crimes of his sons were not God's doing.
97. 2.32Ahithophel hid his wickedness from David; his counsel to Absalom was meant to prevent reconciliation, and when it failed he hanged himself, as God had frustrated his advice.
98. 2.33David's men kept him from the battle as worth ten thousand of them; Absalom, caught by the head in a tree, was killed by Joab and buried under stones.
99. 2.34Absalom had children who died, so he set up a pillar as his memorial; both statements are true.
100. 2.35David mourned Absalom out of fatherly love and because, dead, his son could no longer repent.
101. 2.36David, who disliked Joab's boldness, offered his command to Absalom's general Amasa; Joab, envious, treacherously killed him.
102. 2.37The ten tribes claimed a greater share in the king by number and by the birthright of Reuben and Joseph.
103. 2.38David kept apart, but provided for, the concubines Absalom had violated; he could not lawfully live with them, and giving them to others would have been adultery and a pretext for rebellion.
104. 2.39The wise woman of Abel reminded Joab of the law requiring an offer of peace before a siege, and delivered Sheba's head to save her city.
105. 2.40The plinthion is a square formation; Benaiah commanded the royal guard while Joab commanded the army.
106. 2.41Zadok and Abiathar were high priests, while the other priest served David in the palace.
107. 2.42Israel was punished with famine for Saul's breach of the oath to the Gibeonites, teaching that sworn covenants must be kept; Theodoret applies the Canaanites' blessing to the Gentile church.
108. 2.43Old David, saved by Abishai, was kept from further battles; his song of victory (Psalm 18) foretells Christ, his last words show him a prophet, and his refusal of the Bethlehem water shows the self-mastery discipline had taught him.
109. 2.44Abishai and Benaiah are ranked among David's heroes: honored for command and for guarding the king, though not equal to the first three in strength.
110. 2.45The census was the occasion, not the cause, of punishing Israel for its rebellion with Absalom; God permitted David's reasoning, David chose pestilence to share his people's lot, God lessened the punishment, and David bought the threshing floor where the temple would stand.
111. 3.1Nathan acted not from pique but because he knew God had chosen Solomon, and so had Bathsheba remind David of the promise.
112. 3.2Gihon, a name of the Nile, was also given to the spring of Siloam, where Solomon was anointed by Zadok and Nathan.
113. 3.3The officials could rightly wish Solomon greater than David, since fathers rejoice in sons who surpass them; David blessed God and charged Solomon to keep the whole law.
114. 3.4David left Joab's punishment to Solomon because he respected yet feared Joab, who had joined Adonijah and might threaten the young king; he also commended Barzillai's sons.
115. 3.5David warned Solomon about Shimei because he was seditious, foreseeing that he would break Solomon's terms.
116. 3.6The city of David is Zion, where David was buried in a richly furnished tomb, as Josephus reports.
117. 3.7Solomon, judged by the standard for kings, rightly executed Adonijah, whose request for David's concubine was a bid for the throne.
118. 3.8The law allowed a murderer to be taken even from the altar; Shimei died for breaking his sworn agreement.
119. 3.9Abiathar lost the priesthood for supporting Adonijah, which also fulfilled the prophecy against Eli's house.
120. 3.10Solomon's God-given wisdom surpassed even Egypt's famed sages, but he broke the law against foreign wives by marrying Pharaoh's daughter.
121. 3.11The officer “over the levies” directed the carriers; Solomon's rule from the Euphrates to Egypt fulfilled God's promise to Abraham.
122. 3.12Sacrifice on the high places before the temple was irregular but not idolatry; at Gibeon Solomon asked for wisdom and received it with wealth and peace besides.
123. 3.13Solomon recognized his dream as a divine revelation and gave thanks before the ark.
124. 3.14The judgment between the two women shows Solomon's wisdom in letting a mother's nature reveal the truth.
125. 3.15Abiathar lost his high office but remained a priest by birth, so he is still named with Zadok.
126. 3.16The king's daily provisions fed his servants, guards and officials as well.
127. 3.17Ethan and Heman were famous wise men and temple singers whom Solomon surpassed.
128. 3.18Solomon's study of plants and animals is, Theodoret thinks, the source from which medical writers drew their knowledge of remedies.
129. 3.19Pharaoh gave the cities he had captured as his daughter's dowry.
130. 3.20Hiram did not literally anoint Solomon but, as David's friend, endorsed his accession.
131. 3.21Machir and beth (bath) are measures; Josephus gives the size of the bath.
132. 3.22Solomon spent three years preparing materials before laying the temple's foundations in his fourth year.
133. 3.23Theodoret describes Solomon's temple: unhewn stones for the shrine, the forty-cubit Holy Place and twenty-cubit Holy of Holies, the side chambers, porch and windows.
134. 3.24Theodoret explains the temple's construction and furnishings: the silent building, the stories and dimensions, the cherubim, courts, bronze pillars, the bronze sea and the basins.
135. 3.25The “holy things” were spoils and gifts dedicated to God.
136. 3.26The House of the Forest of Lebanon, named for its many cedar columns, was the great hall before Solomon's court of justice.
137. 3.27Solomon's prayer acknowledges that the boundless God is not contained by the temple but shows himself there, and asks that all who pray toward it, Israelites, foreigners, penitents and captives, be heard.
138. 3.28God's dwelling “in darkness” signifies his invisible essence and the dim temple; David received the temple's plan from the Spirit, here called Lord, and passed it to Solomon.
139. 3.29The “book of the song” is one of the many prophetic books used by the historian.
140. 3.30The dedication and Tabernacles together made fourteen days of festival; then God warned Solomon that apostasy would bring exile and the temple's desolation.
141. 3.31Ezion-geber is identified, after Josephus, with Berenice.
142. 3.32Ophir (Sophera) is placed in India, the geographers' “Golden Land.”
143. 3.33The queen of Sheba, a Gentile led by natural law, sought Solomon's wisdom and praised God, an example praised by Christ and illustrating Paul's teaching on Gentiles.
144. 3.34The harp and lyre both have ten strings; one is plucked with fingers, the other with a plectrum.
145. 3.35The “unhewn timber” was smooth, knot-free wood, called pine by Josephus.
146. 3.36Tarshish is placed in India (or Carthage); Solomon, despite God's gifts, took many foreign wives against the law, built shrines for their gods, and lost most of his kingdom for his son.
147. 3.37“Satan” means adversary; Ahijah's torn garment foretold the division of the kingdom because Solomon himself served idols.
148. 3.38God's “will” for David is his choice of David's line to reign in Jerusalem; Solomon's reign and death are recorded with Josephus's figures.
149. 3.39Rehoboam's boast means his little finger is thicker than his father's loins, as Chronicles makes clear.
150. 3.40God allowed Rehoboam's folly to fulfill his sentence; the kingdom split, and Rehoboam's Ammonite mother shows that even the royal line was of foreign blood.
151. 3.41The historian repeats and reorders events because he narrates two kingdoms; Ahijah's oracle against Jeroboam's son and house came after Jeroboam's impiety.
152. 3.42Ahijah and later Shemaiah both foretold Jeroboam's kingdom; but Jeroboam, distrusting God, set up the golden calves at Bethel and Dan to keep his people from Jerusalem.
153. 3.43Jeroboam's self-made feast was condemned by the man of God from Judah, who was later killed by a lion for disobeying God's command after being deceived by the old prophet of Bethel, whom Theodoret regards as a true prophet who lied out of desire for a blessing.
154. 3.44“Filling the hand” means consecrating someone to offer sacrifices as a priest.
155. 3.45The division did not cause the apostasy, for Judah, which kept the temple, sinned as much or more, as the prophets testify; so God let Shishak plunder Jerusalem.
156. 3.46Rehoboam's bronze shields were carried by the royal guard and left at the temple door when the king went in to worship.
157. 3.47God preserved David's line for David's sake; Asa purged idolatry and was victorious by faith, yet left the high places and later trusted Syria rather than God.
158. 3.48Asa sinned by seeking physicians instead of God; the successive destructions of the houses of Jeroboam and Baasha show God punishing the wicked by the wicked; the name Samaria comes from the hill Omri bought.
159. 3.49The reference to the royal annals shows that both Kings and Chronicles drew on earlier written records.
160. 3.50Baal was the god of Tyre and Astarte, called Aphrodite by the Greeks, the goddess of Sidon.
161. 3.51Elijah's oath about the rain was not rash, for he spoke by the Spirit and his word was fulfilled.
162. 3.52God himself fed Elijah by unclean ravens, showing that such purity laws were concessions to Israel's weakness, which God could set aside.
163. 3.53God sent Elijah to a Gentile widow, who in her poverty fed him in faith; she prefigures the Gentile church that received the persecuted apostles.
164. 3.54God let the widow's son die to rouse Elijah's compassion and to confirm the widow's faith by his resurrection; then God himself asked Elijah to end the drought.
165. 3.55Ahab sought Elijah everywhere to force or kill him; Obadiah, who hid a hundred prophets, shows his piety in word and deed.
166. 3.56Elijah could build an altar on Carmel because the one-sanctuary law was for the unstable, and the divided kingdom made Jerusalem inaccessible for his demonstration.
167. 3.57Elijah rebukes Israel for wavering between the Lord and Baal, loyal to neither.
168. 3.58Elijah gave Baal's prophets every advantage, mocked their failure, and then, after drenching the sacrifice three times, called down fire from God, before ending the drought.
169. 3.59God let Elijah fear Jezebel to keep him humble, and showed him at Horeb that he governs by gentleness and patience rather than by wind, earthquake and fire.
170. 3.60By anointing Elisha, Elijah anointed Hazael and Jehu too, for Elisha later conferred their kingship.
171. 3.61Jezebel staged a fast and a false charge that Naboth had “blessed” (that is, cursed) God and the king, to give his murder a show of justice.
172. 3.62Fickle Ahab, led into sin by Jezebel, mourned Naboth, and God postponed his punishment and even gave him victory over the boasting Syrians.
173. 3.63God defeated the Syrians first with a handful of young men, then in the plain, to show that he is not a local god of the hills.
174. 3.64Prophets use parables so that hearers condemn themselves; so the disguised prophet led Ahab to condemn himself for releasing Ben-hadad.
175. 3.65Ahab was punished for sparing Ben-hadad because kindness to Israel's enemy, from a man cruel to the prophets, was injustice.
176. 3.66The prophet's order to strike him came from the Spirit, so the man who refused was killed by a lion.
177. 3.67Jehoshaphat agreed to join Ahab but piously insisted on consulting a true prophet; Micaiah refused to flatter the king.
178. 3.68Micaiah first mocked Ahab with the false prophets' answer, then under oath foretold his defeat; the vision of the lying spirit expresses God's permission, not his command; Ahab died as foretold, and Jehoshaphat, rescued by God, erred in preferring friendship to piety.
179. 4.1Moab rebelled after Ahab's death, despising his son.
180. 4.2The latticed upper room was a summer room with many lattice windows.
181. 4.3Scripture calls idols “loathsome”; Theodoret laments those who made a god of the fly (Baal-zebub).
182. 4.4God, not Elijah, sent the fire on the captains who shared the king's hostile purpose; the third, who approached humbly, was spared.
183. 4.5In the absence of a son, the throne passed to a brother, as later from Jeconiah to his uncle Zedekiah.
184. 4.6“Sons of the prophets” means prophets, by Hebrew idiom; the many prophets of Bethel and Jericho foreknew Elijah's assumption.
185. 4.7Elijah called Elisha's request hard out of concern for the people, since a double portion would mean double punishments such as a seven-year famine.
186. 4.8Elisha called Elijah Israel's chariot and horseman because he alone was worth an army.
187. 4.9Elisha, finding the mantle alone ineffective, invoked Elijah's God, “the hidden one.”
188. 4.10Elisha healed the waters with salt as Moses did with wood; God can change nature by any means.
189. 4.11Mesha was a sheep-breeder paying tribute; the kings in need came to Elisha, who rebuked Joram and helped only for Jehoshaphat's sake.
190. 4.12Elisha called for a Levite musician, and while he played the Spirit (“the hand of the Lord”) told him to have pits dug to receive water.
191. 4.13The besiegers withdrew in pity when the king of Moab sacrificed his heir on the wall.
192. 4.14The widow's husband is identified by some with Obadiah; Elisha multiplied her oil, and the passage shows that pious people remained even under impious kings.
193. 4.15The Shunammite meant that she lived quietly and needed no favors.
194. 4.16Elisha's categorical promise of a son shows God speaking through him; the Shunammite trusted him to raise her dead child, though God had not revealed her grief to him.
195. 4.17Elisha forbade Gehazi to greet anyone because his vanity would make him boast and hinder the miracle.
196. 4.18Elisha's breathing on the dead boy echoes God's breathing life into Adam, though the prophet only restored an existing soul.
197. 4.19The prophets' poverty was powerful: Elisha cured the poisoned pot, fed a hundred, healed Naaman and refused his gifts, punished Gehazi's greed, and made the axe-head float, a figure of the incarnation.
198. 4.20“Phelmouni” means “such a place”; Elisha blinded the Syrians who came to seize him, led them into Samaria, and had them fed and released so that their king would learn God's power.
199. 4.21During the siege, dove's dung was used as a substitute for salt.
200. 4.22Elisha had the door barred against the king's executioner, yet prayed and ended the siege; he warned the Shunammite of a seven-year famine on Israel, twice the length of Elijah's.
201. 4.23Elisha, completing Elijah's commission, told Hazael he would be king and that Ben-hadad would die, but had him spare the sick king despair; he wept foreseeing Hazael's cruelty to Israel.
202. 4.24Hazael smothered Ben-hadad, a fitting end for an impious ingrate; Joram of Judah, married to Ahab's daughter, followed Ahab's impiety.
203. 4.25Edom's revolt from Judah fulfilled Isaac's prophecy to Esau.
204. 4.26Elisha had Jehu anointed secretly by a disciple so that Joram could be removed swiftly without a war.
205. 4.27The young prophet was to flee immediately, since God wants us to use ordinary prudence.
206. 4.28Jehu's officers mocked the prophet as mad; Jehu at first concealed his anointing, then revealed it.
207. 4.29The officers spread their cloaks on the steps for Jehu as king; Aram means the Syrians.
208. 4.30The watchman recognized Jehu by his furious driving; some copies read that God was driving him.
209. 4.31A “burden” is a prophecy spoken by the Spirit; Jehu saw Elijah's oracles against Ahab's house fulfilled in Joram, Jezebel and Ahab's seventy sons.
210. 4.32The “knowers” are soothsayers who claim to know the future.
211. 4.33Jonadab son of Rechab, whose family lived in tents and abstained from wine, was a pious man whom Jehu honored; there were godly people even in Israel.
212. 4.34Jehu's pretended devotion to Baal served to gather and destroy all Baal's priests; he removed Baal worship but kept the golden calves.
213. 4.35Athaliah tried to exterminate David's line, but God had joined the priestly and royal families, and Jehosheba and Jehoiada saved and crowned Joash.
214. 4.36The runners and guards were divided into three groups to secure the palace and temple gates.
215. 4.37Theodoret explains the guard arrangements at Joash's coronation, with help from the other translators, Chronicles and Josephus.
216. 4.38The “holy thing” was the anointing and the “testimony” the crown; Athaliah, crying “conspiracy,” was executed outside the temple.
217. 4.39Jehoiada bound king and people by covenant to serve the Lord; Joash did right while Jehoiada taught him, though sacrifice on the high places continued.
218. 4.40The “silver of valuation” was money from vows, which Joash had the priests use for repairing the temple's damage (bedek).
219. 4.41God's “repentance” toward Israel was his change from punishment to restoration after Hazael had nearly destroyed them.
220. 4.42Elisha's sign of the arrows foretold Joash's victories, limited to three by his half-hearted striking; even dead, Elisha raised a man, proving his double portion.
221. 4.43Jehoash's parable of the thistle and the cedar warned proud Amaziah, who ignored it and was defeated, with Jerusalem plundered.
222. 4.44Elath (Ailon) is the city of Aila on the Red Sea gulf.
223. 4.45Jonah's prophecy about Jeroboam II's borders is not in the book of Jonah, which records only the Nineveh episode.
224. 4.46Uzziah's leprosy is explained in Chronicles; Jotham ruled well but left the high places, and Ahaz surpassed all in impiety.
225. 4.47Ahaz's passing his sons through fire is compared with a fire-leaping purification rite Theodoret had seen in his own day.
226. 4.48Ahaz's new altar, copied from Damascus, was for foreign gods, as Chronicles confirms; he also dismantled temple furnishings and profaned the precincts.
227. 4.49Israel and Judah alike filled the land with idolatry, leading to exile and the mixed worship of the Samaritans; Hezekiah alone removed the high places and destroyed the bronze serpent, a type of Christ's passion misused as an idol.
228. 4.50The siege of Samaria lasted three full years.
229. 4.51Hezekiah had stopped paying the tribute Ahaz had promised Assyria, and paid it again when Sennacherib invaded.
230. 4.52Hezekiah paid Sennacherib from the temple treasures to save the city; when Rabshakeh blasphemed, he turned to prayer and Isaiah, and God destroyed the Assyrian army; Theodoret refers to his commentary on Isaiah for the rest.
231. 4.53Hezekiah erred in displaying his wealth rather than God's power; his son Manasseh, by choice, reversed his piety and filled even the temple with idolatry.
232. 4.54Jerusalem would suffer Samaria's fate because of Manasseh's idolatry and bloodshed (including, by tradition, Isaiah's martyrdom); Josiah's repentance on hearing the book of the law spared him, and he destroyed the idols.
233. 4.55The “house of the Kadeseim” housed cult prostitutes or idols of Astarte, which Josiah destroyed; the priests of the high places, who had served God there, were tolerated but excluded from the altar.
234. 4.56Topheth was the place of child sacrifice to Molech, which Josiah defiled; the preservation of the old prophet's bones with the man of God's confirms he was a true prophet.
235. 4.57The praise of Hezekiah and Josiah as without equal compares them with other kings, not with each other or with David; Josiah, too, erred in fighting Neco against God's warning.
236. 5.1Theodoret surveys 1 Chronicles: its purpose as a supplement to Kingdoms written after the exile, the genealogies (Nathan, Judah's leadership pointing to Christ, the priests and singers), the Nethinim, the temple service, Saul's death and the medium, the Spirit called Lord Almighty, and the moving of the ark.
237. 5.2On 1 Chronicles 15–29: David's ephod was not priestly; the psalms are David's; his altar on Ornan's floor was accepted by fire from heaven; he was not to build the temple because Christ, his son, would build the churches and Solomon prefigured his peace; the singers prophesied; the Spirit who gave the temple plan is Lord.
238. 5.3On 2 Chronicles 1–9: Solomon's confession that no house can contain God, the agreement of Chronicles and Kings on the temple's measurements, Zion as David's city, the psalms as David's, and the prophetic books of Nathan, Ahijah and Joel (whom Theodoret identifies with the man of God of 1 Kings 13).
239. 5.4Theodoret's running commentary on 2 Chronicles 10–36 supplements Kings: God divides the kingdom and spares Judah for David's sake; pious kings (Abijah, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, Josiah) are rewarded and their lapses punished; impious ones (Joram, Joash, Amaziah, Uzziah, Ahaz) are disciplined; Manasseh repents; the book was compiled from prophetic sources after the exile.